By Deacon Paul Kurmay
Deacon Paul has served as a Deacon at St. Mark Parish in Stratford since 1985. He founded Bethlehem House in 2000 (a transitional home for homeless families). He also founded the Lord’s Kitchen.
Let me tell you a little story. One day a priest went to the hospital to give a dying parishioner the last rites. When he got there, the man’s wife was relieved to see him and offered to wait outside the door so they would have some privacy. The priest saw that the man was conscious but could not speak. He said to him, “Harry, I know it’s hard for you to speak so let me give you a pen and paper so you can give your wife your final farewell message. With that, the man hurriedly wrote down a few words and gave it to the priest who put it in his pocket. As he was administering the Sacrament, Harry quietly passed away. He blessed him and went out to console his wife. “Marge,” he said, “Harry wanted to give you his last message.” He then gave her the piece of paper. “What did it say?” he asked. As she opened it, her face blushed as he repeated Harry’s last words:” Take your foot off of my oxygen line!”
Ah yes, I bet you didn’t expect a little gallows humor! Actually, before you think I am totally insensitive and callous, there really was a spiritual message in that story. Without even being aware of it, we have the power to stand on the Holy Spirit’s lifeline and to cut off the spiritual oxygen to our souls. And the result can be catastrophic, just as it was for poor Harry.
This weekend, we’re celebrating Pentecost, one of the three most important solemnities of the year, along with Christmas and Easter. In the eye witness account from the Acts of the Apostles, we can vividly experience the miracle as it took place. A driving wind mysteriously fills the inside of a closed room. Tongues of fire, bright red, descend on each person’s head and they all begin to pray in different tongues. Jews from every corner of the world can understand the various languages spoken by foreigners. And they are all filled with wisdom, peace and fortitude. They had truly become one in Christ.
This was in stark contrast to the story of the Tower of Babel taken from the first pages of Genesis when human pride and ambition sought to acquire the power and glory of God Himself, and when, in response, God took away their ability to understand one another. They were no longer a united people, but a badly divided one.
Today, in our nation, we have reverted to the days of Babel. By stepping on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are no longer united as at Pentecost but terribly divided and no longer able to understand one another, no matter what the language spoken.
Our society is suffering from a frightful case of extreme angst and anxiety, resulting in agitation, impatience, irritability and intolerance. We look for scapegoats everywhere, to blame for what ails us. If only they would go away and go back to where they belong, there would be peace and harmony in the valley again. To justify our thoughts, we enter a vast social media echo chamber in which the like-minded applaud one another for their wisdom and despise everyone else! The result is bitterness, anger and hatred, leading to both verbal and sometimes physical warfare — the exact opposite of the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
So, what is the antidote for this spiritual and social disease? What are we to do as followers of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit? Surely the Lord is not calling us to engage in more verbal warfare. That’s precisely what Jesus came to save us from! But the world doesn’t want a Savior, does it? You’d have to admit that you need saving in order to want a Savior, and that is something the egotistical mind can’t imagine or accept. The world wants a conqueror, to redress the terrible wrongs committed against it. It doesn’t want peace and reconciliation. It wants conquest and victory. And how does the world see victory? — not in harmony and peace based on mutual understanding and respect, but by the annihilation of our enemies, domestic and foreign. That is the medicine the world has prescribed for its angst, and its side effect is spiritual death. Thomas Merton once remarked: “It may make sense for a sick man to pray for health and then take medicine, but I fail to see any sense at all in his praying for health and then drinking poison!” That is exactly what we are doing when we swallow Satan’s lies.
The famous Franciscan spiritual author, Fr. Richard Rohr, put it this way: “if a voice comes from accusation and leads to accusation, it is quite simply the voice of the ‘Accuser,’ which is the literal meaning of the word ‘Satan.’ Shaming, accusing or blaming is simply not how God talks. It is how we talk.” Merton made it even clearer: “In the devil’s theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong. *** It means that everyone wants to be absolutely right himself or to attach himself to another who is absolutely right. And in order to prove their rightness they have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong.” Sound familiar? I heard two Congresswomen verbally attacking each other on the House floor the other day. To say that they were acting like two year olds is to insult two year olds! I fear what would have happened if they were wielding pistols instead of vicious tongues.
The Holy Spirit acts in the exact opposite way. He is the loving Advocate, defending each one of us from attack and false accusations. In sharp contrast to Satan’s deadly medicine, the Holy Spirit offers us His life-giving medicine: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. St. Paul told us long ago: “You must know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. *** You are not your own. You have been purchased, and at a [great] price. So glorify God in your body.”
In the little book, God Calling, filled with spiritual lessons given to two British women in the 1930’s, Jesus offered this sage spiritual advice: “All agitation is destructive of good. All calm is constructive of goo, and at the same time destructive of evil. When man wants evil destroyed so often he rushes to action. It is wrong. First be still and know that I am God. Then act only as I tell you. Always calm with God. Calm is trust in action. Only trust, perfect trust, can keep one calm. Never be afraid of any circumstances or difficulties that help you to cultivate this calm. As the world, to attain, has to learn speed, you, to attain, have to learn calm.”
Each of us has a choice: to swallow and promote Satan’s poisonous lies or to take the Holy Spirit’s life-giving medicine. Which medicine will you take? If you listen carefully enough, you might even hear the good Lord whisper to you: “If you really want to live, take your foot off of the Holy Spirit’s life line and follow me!”